This WW1 soldier poet has been found for us through some amazing research by author, poet, translator, historian AC Benus.
AC Benus is the author of a book about German WW1 poet Hans Ehrenbaum-Degele : “The Thousandth Regiment: A Translation of and Commentary on Hans Ehrenbaum-Degele’s War Poems” by AC Benus (AC Benus, San Francisco, 2020). Along with Hans's story, the book includes original poems as well as translations. ISBN: 978-1657220584
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1657220583 and https://www.amazon.com/dp/1657220583
AC Benus, who often helps me with research, told me that Reginald translated “The Sonnets of Karl August Georg Max Graf von Platten-Hallermünde” (Boston, 1923) and included this poem of dedication in the translated volume. It is this poem that led AC Benus to think he may have written other poems during WW1 … and the search began.
"TO F. G. C. of the Royal Air Force" by Reginald Bancroft Cooke
To you, in memory of war- time days,
When your New Zealand and my Canada
Fought with our England 'neath a single star
Against one foe, who set the world ablaze
To you the thoughts this slender book conveys
I beg to offer from this land afar,
Hoping some verses here perchance there are
Which may be not unworthy of your praise.
For these are stolen fruit. I have but lent
The means whereby another might confess
His heart to those whose hours cannot be spent
In foreign vineyards, there the juice to press
From foreign vines. Therefore to what extent
His thoughts are mine 'tis yours, my friend, to guess.
If anyone has any idea who F.G.C of the Royal Air Force was please get in touch.
Mention of "our England" in the poem, led me to research and I discovered that Reginald was born in Birkenhead, Cheshire on 13th July 1887. His parents were Bancroft Cooke, a Managing Director, cotton broker and general merchant, and his wife, Emily Sarah Cooke, nee Madge, who were married in June 1876. Reginald had 4 older siblings: Hester Bancroft Cooke - born May 1877 d 1938 California; Dora Bancroft Cooke – born Nov 1878, died Aug 1890 Birkenhead; Leonard Austin Cooke – born 1881, Died 1955 California; & Arthur Bancroft Cooke, born 1882, died 1943 California.
In 1901 the family lived in a house called The Lems, Kirklake Road, Formby, Ormskirk, Lancashire, England. He seems to have spent a great deal of time in the United States of America - I imagine that his father must have had friends and possibly even family there due to his involvement with cotton. Reginald studied at the University of California, Berkley.
Information on the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry Record Card shows Reginald enlisted as a Private on 4th October 1915 in London, Ontario. He gave his home address as Carpentaria, California, U.S.A. He had been in the University’s cadet corps and was described as a ‘student teacher’.
Additional research carried out by AC Benus confirms that the information I found about Reginald is correct. Reginald graduated on 11th May 1910 with a Masters of Arts from Berkley.
Reginald also published a collection of his own poems – “Some Sonnets of a Passing Epoch”, Reginald Bancroft Cooke (Southworth Press, Maine, 1925) - 61 pages
https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Some_Sonnets_of_a_Passing_Epoch.html?id=qkZDAAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y
According to the inside cover of Reginald's collection, he obtained a Ph.d from the University of Wisconsin.
Here are some of the poems from Reginald's WW1 collection:
JUTLAND
SHIPS of the line ! Men of the mast ! Yo-ho !
The sea is England's proper battle ground,
And not since Aboukir has there been found
So fine an admiral as Jellicoe.
Blow hard, ye winds, adown the North Sea, blow !
Surge, ye tumultuous waves which still surround
Our island homes ! From every bourne and bound
Join with our guns to sink this upstart foe.
Long shall their landsmen sailors rue “ the day"
When they crept forth too far from sheltering shores,
For many a year their children's children pray
That they may truly have no further cause
To learn what better had been learned in school,
That on the ocean Britons ever rule.
Page 15
THE PLEDGE OF THE PRINCESS PATS
WHAT deeds are those that blazon bright the name
Of Connaught's royal daughter on the scroll
Of history ! While the battle thunders roll
O’er the fair vales of France, and the fierce flame
Of just revenge illumes the land, their fame,
Like a loud trumpet, shall inspire the soul
Of Canada, aye, and from pole to pole
Long shall resound. And well ye know whence came
These warriors; how, like a flowing tide,
Gladly their homeland has outpoured her best,
Their deeds a pledge that, trusted and well tried
On many a field, She shall fight on beside
Her parent, Britain , until, east and west,
Our empire stands triumphant, undefied.
Page 21
NOTE: The Battle of the Nile –1st August 1798 – fought near Alexandria in Egypt - was also called the Battle of Aboukir when Admiral Lord Nelson was in command of the British Fleet.
Sources: Find my Past, FreeBMD and The Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry who inform me that the 26th Battalion doesn’t exist anymore, but they are perpetuated now by The Royal New Brunswick Regiment.
